Mervyn Peake Quotes

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Each day I live in a glass room unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape.

Mervyn Peake

Wall, Glasses, Great Day

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This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

Mervyn Peake

Night, Ivy, Long

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.12, The Overlook Press

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To live at all is miracle enough.

Mervyn Peake

Inspirational, Miracle, Religion

Mervyn Peake (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.307, Carcanet

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There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.

Mervyn Peake

Air, Silence, Scythes

Mervyn Peake (2008). “Titus Alone”, p.110, The Overlook Press

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The sun sank with a sob and darkness waded in from all horizons so that the sky contracted and there was no more light left in the world, when, at this very moment of annihilation, the moon, as though she had been waiting for her cue, sailed up the night.

Mervyn Peake

Moon, Night, Light

Mervyn Peake (2008). “Titus Alone”, p.17, The Overlook Press

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He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.

Mervyn Peake

Independence, Saws, Revolt

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.21, The Overlook Press

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Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.

Mervyn Peake

Lonely, All Alone, Lingering

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.118, The Overlook Press

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Mount and begone. The world awaits you.

Mervyn Peake

World

Mervyn Peake (1995). “The Gormenghast Novels”, Overlook Books

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As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.

Mervyn Peake

Ocean, Imagination, Effort

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There is a brotherhood among the kindly- Closer and defter and more integral- Than any of aisle or coven- For love rang out before the chapel bell

Mervyn Peake

Kindness, Brotherhood, Bells

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We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.

Mervyn Peake

Printed Word, Black, Sound

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.230, The Overlook Press

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Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me.

Mervyn Peake

Too Much, My Own, Quietness

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.160, The Overlook Press

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For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.

Mervyn Peake

Lifeless

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Gormenghast”, p.72, The Overlook Press

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I am the wilderness lost in man.

Mervyn Peake

Men, Wilderness, Lost

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The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreathes that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up hidden walls.

Mervyn Peake

Wall, Dark, Lakes

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.161, The Overlook Press

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I want a lot to eat, I'm going to think today.

Mervyn Peake

Thinking, Want, Today

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.62, The Overlook Press

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The moon slid inexorably into its zenith, the shadows shrivelling to the feet of all that cast them, and as Rantel approached the hollow at the hem of the Twisted Woods he was treading in a pool of his own midnight.

Mervyn Peake

Moon, Feet, Shadow

Mervyn Peake (1995). “The Gormenghast Novels”, Overlook Books

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His was not the hatred that arises suddenly like a storm and as suddenly abates. It was, once the initial shock of anger and pain was over, a calculated thing that grew in a bloodless way.

Mervyn Peake

Pain, Hatred, Storm

Mervyn Peake (1995). “The Gormenghast Novels”, Overlook Books

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In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question.

Mervyn Peake

Pain, Real, Doors

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Countless candles dribbled with hot wax, and their flames, like little flags, fluttered in the unchartered currents of air. Thousands of lamps, naked, or shuttered behind coloured glass, burned with their glows of purple, amber, grass-green, blue, blood red and even grey. The walls of Gormenghast were like the walls of paradise or like the walls of an inferno. The colours were devilish or angelical according to the colour of the mind that watched them. They swam, those walls, with the hues of hell, with the tints of Zion. The breasts of the plumaged seraphim; the scales of Satan.

Mervyn Peake

Wall, Purple, Glasses

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Gormenghast”, p.226, The Overlook Press

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Why break the heart that never beat from love?

Mervyn Peake

Heart, Break, Beats

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.348, The Overlook Press

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Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.

Mervyn Peake

Life Is, Gormenghast

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.230, The Overlook Press

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What is Time... That you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that second-hand, overrated knob of gilt, or of his sister, that fatuous circle of silver paper? A curse upon their ridiculous dictatorship!

Mervyn Peake

Time, Hands, Circles

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.239, The Overlook Press

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Seeing an Earl as an owl on a mantelpiece, and having part of one's face removed by a cat, both on the same morning, can temporarily undermine the self-control of any man.

Mervyn Peake

Morning, Cat, Men

Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.309, The Overlook Press

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There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humor. It is naked noise and naked malice.

Mervyn Peake

Laughter, Ignorance, Ice

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Born: July 9, 1911
Died: November 17, 1968
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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